Showing results by narrator "Nicola Barber" in All Categories

James Patterson's BookShots. Short, fast-paced, high-impact entertainment. The greatest story in modern history has a new chapter.... Posing as newlyweds, two ruthless thieves board the Titanic to rob its well-heeled passengers. But an even more shocking plan is afoot - a sensational scheme that could alter the fate of the world's most famous ship.

Radioactive is the mesmerizing, landmark biography of Marie Curie, by acclaimed author and artist Lauren Redniss. Through brilliant storytelling, Redniss walks us through Curie’s life, which was marked by extraordinary scientific discovery and dramatic personal trauma - from her complex working and romantic relationship with Pierre Curie, to their discovery of two new scientific elements, to Pierre’s tragic death, to Marie’s two Nobel Prizes.

Ridley Pearson brings us the origins of the rivalry between literature's most famous enemies - Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty - told from the perspective of James' observant little sister, Moria. Before James grew up to be a ruthless, remorseless villain, he was a curious boy from Boston, with a penchant for trouble and an acid tongue. Thrown into a boarding school against his wishes, James winds up rooming with a most unlikely companion: a lanky British know-it-all named Sherlock Holmes.

Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters is a collection of 23 stories focused around the theme of strange creatures in the vein of Pacific Rim, Godzilla, Cloverfield, and more. The anthology opens with a foreword by Jeremy Robinson, author of Project Nemesis, the highest selling Kaiju novel in the United States since the old Godzilla books - and perhaps even more than those. Then, from New York Times best sellers to indie darlings Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters features authors that are perfectly suited for writing larger-than-life stories.

A woman private eye in a man's world, Molly Murphy is having a hard time succeeding as a New York shamus. That's why she agrees to go undercover for the NYPD to expose a pair of spiritualist sisters as con-artists even though the offer comes from police captain Daniel Sullivan. Sullivan had once won Molly's heart - until she discovered he already had a socialite fiancée and an upcoming wedding. Now Molly's masquerading as a cousin from Ireland at the Hudson River mansion of Senator Barney Flynn. Flynn's invalid wife hopes the psychic sisters can contact her dead son, kidnapped and lost in a sensational crime.

This Victorian best seller, along with Braddon's other famous novel, Aurora Floyd, established her as the main rival of the master of the sensational novel, Wilkie Collins. A protest against the passive, insipid 19th-century heroine, Lady Audley was described by one critic of the time as "high-strung, full of passion, purpose, and movement." Her crime (the secret of the title) is shown to threaten the apparently respectable middle-class world of Victorian England.

Dashiell Hammett was a crime writer who elevated the genre to true literature, and The Thin Man was Hammett’s last - and most successful - novel. Following the enormous success of The Thin Man movie in 1934, Hammett was commissioned to write stories for additional films. He wrote two full-length novellas for the films that became After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man.

As a journalist for the Independent, Emma Bamford is swept along with the London rat race, lost amongst the egos of Fleet Street. Surrounded by budget cuts and bullies, the thrill of a breaking news story is no longer enough. And at 31, still struggling to get to a fourth date and surrounded by friends settling down to married life and babies, Emma decides to grasp her life by the roots and reclaim her freedom...by running away to sea and joining a complete stranger (and his cat) on a yacht in Borneo.

This story is, in essence, the novelization of Wollstonecraft's ultimate work, Vindication of the Rights of Women. It follows a girl who grows up in a moderately wealthy English family in 18th century, trying to find love and individuality in a time when such concepts are incomprehensible to society. Mary, the main character, follows life and love through a turbulent series of ups and downs while trying to remain true to herself.

Molly Murphy Sullivan's husband, Daniel, a police captain in turn-of-the-century New York City, is in a precarious position. The new police commissioner wants him off the force altogether. So when Daniel's offered an assignment from John Wilkie, head of the Secret Service, he's eager to accept. Molly can't draw any details of the assignment out of him, even where he'll be working.

When the British Arean Company founded its Martian colony, it welcomed any settlers it could get. Outcasts, misfits, and dreamers emigrated in droves to undertake the grueling task of terraforming the cold red planet - only to be abandoned when the BAC discovered it couldn't turn a profit on Mars. Mary Griffith and her struggles and triumphs are at the center of it all, in her bar, the Empress of Mars.

Molly and Daniel Sullivan are settling happily into the new routines of parenthood, but their domestic bliss is shattered the night a gang retaliates against Daniel for making a big arrest. Daniel wants his family safely out of New York City as soon as possible. In shock and grieving, but knowing she needs to protect their infant son, Liam, Molly agrees to take him on the long journey to Paris to stay with her friends Sid and Gus, who are studying art in the City of Light. But upon arriving in Paris, nothing goes as planned....

This is a true story about Frances, age 9, who saw fairies by the waterfall behind her house. Nobody but Frances saw them, but when she told her cousin Elsie and their parents, the adults teased them. Why not take a photograph? Elsie (who was fifteen) had the idea. She would paint paper fairies and take their picture with Frances, and none would be the wiser. The girls never meant to fool the world. Who could have imagined that Elsie’s photograph would fall into the hands of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes?

Save the spirit animals in this gripping second special edition in the New York Times best-selling series, tied to the brand-new Fall of the Beasts story arc. Confidential until March 2016!

Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly landlord of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the services of her detective-agency tenants to solve a decade-old murder - her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny's fiancé, who went missing the night she died. But when a new gruesome murder closely mirrors the events of 10 years prior, Abigail and Jackaby realize that Jenny's case isn't so cold after all.

Summer, 1936. In England, an assassin is loose. Someone is killing young people who possess Talents. As terror overtakes Britain, Kim Tavistock, now officially employed by England's Secret Intelligence Service, is sent on her first mission: to the remote Sulcliffe Castle in Wales, to use her cover as a journalist to infiltrate a spiritualist cult that may have ties to the murders. Meanwhile, Kim's father, trained spy Julian Tavistock, runs his own parallel investigation - and discovers the terrifying Nazi plot behind the serial killings.

Irish immigrant and private detective Molly Murphy is thrilled to have a ticket to see world-famous illusionist Harry Houdini. But before he can even take the stage, the opening act goes horribly wrong—and the sensational Signor Scarpelli’s lovely assistant is sawed in half. In the aftermath, Scarpelli accuses Houdini of tampering with his equipment. Who else but the so-called Handcuff King could have got a hold of his trunk of tricks, which he keeps under lock and key?

In 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. Four years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the estranged twin sister she hasn’t seen since 1940. Since that one catastrophic summer in Rome, as war was engulfing Europe and Iris was falling desperately in love.... Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of Agent Fox in a precarious plot to extract her sister from behind the Iron Curtain.

Selling rare books has its moments, but few are anything close to thrilling - except when Dido Hoare's scoundrel of an ex-husband suddenly reappears and puts a pulse of excitement in the air. But events go from interesting to intense when someone ends up murdered and the culprit seems to think Dido has something worth killing for, too. With the help of her father, Barnabas, a retired academic with a penchant for mysteries, Dido may be able to divert the killer long enough to figure out who wants her dead and why.

The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency was supposed to be a secret constabulary, but after the success of their first case, all of London knows that Lady Ada and Mary are the girls to go to if you have a problem. Their new case is a puzzle indeed. It involves a horrible hospital, a missing will, a hasty engagement, and a suspiciously slippery servant. But Mary's stumbled onto a mystery of her own. She spotted a ghostly girl in a grey gown dashing through the park. A girl who is the spitting image of their new client.